In Memory of PSA Members
Fred Preston arrived on the UNLV campus in 1973, having just earned “graduate student of the year” status from the prestigious (as Fred himself would happily tell you) institution of “The” Ohio State University. Very quickly, he established himself as the booming voice of the fledgling sociology program at UNLV – a program that at the time very much needed that voice, along with the charisma and enthusiasm he brought to the academic table.
He soon found his teaching niche as the academic ringleader of large Sociology 101 courses that rapidly became the most popular classes on campus. These 100- to 200-student courses somehow seemed at once rousing and intimate to those fortunate enough to attend, as any of his many thousands of former students would attest. Dr. Preston reveled in teaching moments large and small, when he held the student masses in the figurative palm of his teaching hand, regaling them with tales of childhood pranks past and related sociological insights present. Most telling during these tales was the near silence that breathed through the room as he built up to a denouement. It is not easy to keep a roomful of easily distracted 18 year olds waiting with baited breath, but for Dr. Preston, this was an every-Tuesday-and-Thursday occurrence. Years later, one could never go anywhere in Las Vegas with Fred and not be stopped along the way by a former student. These students almost always begged for a retelling of a particularly memorable vignette, or a classically hilarious illustration of a point less humorously made by Erving Goffman or Emile Durkheim.
Alongside a handful of skilled UNLV sociology “founding figures” (including Don Carns, Jim Frey, Ron Smith, and Andy Fontana), Fred led the modest sociology program as it grew in academic stature. A former president of the Pacific Sociological Association (where he memorably insisted that annual conferences be held only in “fun” cities), Dr. Preston’s scholarship no doubt contributed significantly to this rise to national and international prominence. He published widely in fields as diverse as men’s issues, sport and society, drug and alcohol abuse, deviance theory, and the area that became a passion later in his career, gambling studies. In the latter field, his unique perspective as a 35 year academic in Las Vegas lent sober perspectives to a field that grew alongside his own career, as gambling expanded into more and more global communities (and brought with it more and more academic questions as to its impacts). Finally, in what has to be a singular achievement, Dr. Preston even gave the university his coaching energies. After conducting research on masculinity of rodeo athletes, Fred was invited to serve as an assistant coach of the men’s and women’s rodeo teams at UNLV – and nobody was prouder when his women’s team secured the national championship in the sport. Citing “participant observation” as a particularly useful sociological research methodology, he brazenly leapt into the rodeo chutes to steer wrestle – a skill that Fred claimed he picked up easily thanks to a prolific high school football career back in Ohio.
In the end, this devotion symbolizes much about Fred Preston: his willingness to engage anything students needed him to, a passion for committing once he did, and a unique ability to turn it all into meaningful lecture material for his students. It is often said of teaching that one never knows where one’s influence ends, as a teacher teaches many thousands of people, who in turn teach people, who in turn teach more people, and so on. Never was this statement truer than it was with Fred Preston, who was mathematically likely to have influenced an almost unimaginably exponential number of grateful souls. Today, many thousands of former students -- from NBA great Sidney Green (who spent two full days in the hospital with Fred in the week before he passed away) to the daughters of mobbed-up leaders of “old Las Vegas” -- owe their own wisdom and their own teaching sensibilities to their beloved UNLV ringleader.
Heather L. Heartley (1969-2008), Portland State University
Heather Hartley was a tenured faculty member in sociology at Portland State. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was an active participant in the PSA, giving presentations regularly at the annual PSA conferences. Her area was medical sociology. She published her research in Health, Sociology of Health and Illness, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and Teaching Sociology.
Carl W. Backman, University of Nevada Reno
Carl W. Backman, a long-time PSA member and former President of the organization (1970-71), died at his home in Reno, Nevada, on February 16, 2008. He was 84. Carl was born 1923 in Canandaigua, New York, in the midst of a family fishing trip. His father was a Swedish immigrant; his mother was of German-Irish descent. Raised in the town of Tonawanda near Buffalo, New York, he never finished high school because he was needed in his father’s shop. Eventually, he went on to Oberlin College in Ohio, but his college career was interrupted by service in the Army during World War II. Because of his high IQ scores he was assigned to intelligence. He fought in the Philippines, usually sneaking in ahead of major landings to do pre-invasion reconnaissance, and he barely outweighed the heavy radios he had to lug onto the islands. Typically, his unit was told to avoid the enemy and, in case of enemy contact, to not take prisoners, though, because of his bad eyesight, Carl never saw the enemy first. But when his unit was once instructed to capture and bring back Japanese soldiers, he realized that the enemy were young men just like him, driven by the same hopes and fears. This, and similar experiences, left him a life-long skeptic of war.
Upon his return from the Army, he completed college and married his wife of 60 years, Shirley Bennett from Danvers, Massachusetts. He earned a Ph.D. in sociology at Indiana University under Karl Schuessler. After four years at the University of Arkansas, three of them as ABD, he joined the faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno in 1955. Because he came to love Reno and the West, he remained at UNR until the end of his life, only interrupted by a two-year stint as program director for Sociology and Social Psychology at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. At UNR he was department chair, director of the social psychology program, and, at his expressed wish only for a short time, dean. Outside of UNR, he served as the editor of Sociometry (subsequently renamed Social Psychology Quarterly) and became the president of PSA, to name only a few of his honors.
Carl’s scholarly contributions were in social psychology, focusing mainly on the self, interpersonal relations, and group processes. Though a sociologist by training and employment, he did not see social psychology as being “owned” by any academic discipline. Soon after his arrival at UNR, he teamed up with psychologist Paul Secord with whom he published in the best journals of the day in sociology and psychology. In 1964 Secord and Backman achieved international recognition through their widely used textbook “Social Psychology.” Translated into more than twenty languages and once re-edited, the book was perhaps the most complete, but maybe also the last effort to present social psychology as a coherent discipline equally shared between sociology and psychology.
In part as an expression of their unitary vision of social psychology and with the critical contribution of Gerald Ginsburg, Carl Backman and Paul Secord established the “Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Social Psychology” at the University of Nevada. Since it graduated its first Ph.D. in 1967, this program continues to thrive to this day. Carl was also one of very few individuals who were ever named a fellow by both the American Sociological Association and the American Psychological Association.
Though by disposition not at all a radical, Carl knew when it was time for a social scientist to take a stand. During the Sixties he was involved in fighting racism in Nevada. He took part in various protests on and off campus and refused to hold conferences in the state until discriminatory practices in housing and segregation in hotels and casinos were banned by law. His activities earned him a spot on an infamous list of “communists” distributed by a right-wing state senator—a distinction to be proud of.
Carl had a great influence on his discipline, PSA, the university that he served, the department and the Ph.D. program that he helped build, as well as his many colleagues, students and friends. A loving and loved family man, he is survived by his wife, a sister, five children and nine grandchildren.
Jim Wood, San Diego State
Jim Wood passed away on Wednesday April 18th. He joined the San Diego State faculty in 1974 after receiving his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, studying under Neil Smelser. He served as department chair for many years, and he was instrumental in organizing the resistance in 1992 to threatened faculty layoffs and firings at San Diego Sate and in the sociology department. At the end of over 180 days of faculty and student protests, the chancellor instructed the president of San Diego State, Tom Day, to retract the layoff letters. Jim Wood was as responsible as anyone for this victory.
Jim was also a loyal and active member of the Pacific Sociological Association. He presented his first PSA paper at the conference held in San Jose in March of 1974. It was titled "Ideology, Social Structure and Student Protest." He regularly organized sessions dealing with various aspects of higher education--threats to tenure, financial issues and funding, and prospects for higher education in the 21st century. In addition he presented many papers over the years, among some of the most recent "Higher Education Funding in Comparative Perspective" in 1997; "University Crisis and Professional Organizations" in 1998; and "A Comparative Analysis of Tenure Procedures in Universities, Law Schools, and Medical Schools" in 2003. In 1998, working with Charles Hohm, he edited a special issue of Sociological Perspectives, “The Academy Under Siege,” which dealt with issues in higher education. For the 2007 meeting in Oakland, Jim organized a session on "Sociology and Higher Education." He was unable to attend the conference, but was responsible to the very end, sending an email to the participants on the eve of the conference informing them that he would miss seeing them, listening to their papers, and joining the discussion. He also served on several program committees during his long involvement with the association. He was a consummate supporter of the PSA and will be greatly missed at the annual meetings.
